Stater Bros. 300 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

GREG BIFFLE—16—Ameriquest Mortgage Ford Fusion (Finished 1st) – “I think we have a great chance at tomorrow. I’ve got a really good Jackson-Hewitt National Guard car for tomorrow, but I’ll tell you what, this Ameriquest car ran really good all day. Just in the middle part of the race we had a bad push and the guys and Eddie Pardue, my hat’s off to him, he kept working on the car and the guys in the pits kept making the adjustments I was asking for, and at the end there we were running the 60 and the 21 a little bit, but we certainly weren’t going to catch them without a caution. We really needed that caution to do our thing. I’m just really excited to win here at California again; it’s something else.” WHAT ADJUSTMENTS DID YOU MAKE ON THE FINAL GREEN-FLAG PIT STOP? “I had them raise the track bar and do some wedge adjustments. We made a tire pressure adjustment. They were really working their butts off on this race car. Our stops were a little bit slow because we were doing so much work, and we had to make it up on the race track. We just got that caution and that’s what we really needed.” WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FOR TOMORROW? “Carl was really fast and so was the 21 car. Definitely the Ford Fusion is a car to be reckoned with. My car is very good fro tomorrow so I’m very excited.”

CARL EDWARDS—60—Ameriquest Mortgage Ford Fusion (Finished 3rd) – TALK ABOUT THE DECISION TO PIT UNDER THE FINAL CAUTION. “It was a little bit lonely, but that was a fun race. That’s as good as it gets. We had an Ameriquest car in victory lane, but it’s just the wrong one, but congratulations to Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton and Ryan Newman. I haven’t had that much fun racing for a long time. I’m glad to be here and glad to drive the cars, and it was a good points day.” HOW MUCH DID THE TRACK CONDITIONS CHANGE OVER THE COURSE OF THE RACE? “I’m sweating. The car got a little tighter there at the end. We tried real hard. P.K., my crew chief, did a great job. We tried to adjust it and I thought even with going to the back we could get them, but it just didn’t work out. It’s good practice for tomorrow, though.”

JOHN ANDRETTI—10—Freedom Roads/Camping World Ford Fusion (Finished 19th) – “We never figured we’d start out loose and we were real loose most of the race. We got it tightened up a little bit, but not enough. It’s one of those things where that’s the first time that I’ve ever drove a Busch car in traffic anything other than Daytona. Not the Busch cars, but the Busch drivers drive a little bit different than the Cup guys, especially the lap-down guys. We stayed out longer than everybody else, so that got us a lap that we led, but when you do that you lose all that track time. Either way you’re wrong and you just hope that everything shines on you. For us, it didn’t work out, but then it did because we got the Lucky Dog.”

MATT KENSETH—17—Pennzoil Ford Fusion (Finished 6th) – YOU HAD AN ISSUE EARLY IN THE RACE. “It was the first pit stop of the day on lap 18 or something, and we came out a good second and had to go to the back. It was tough with that many cars on the lead lap to work our way through there. It was tough to pass and we just missed the setup a little.” HOW DID THE TRACK CONDITIONS CHANGE AS THE SUN SET? “It was really tight compared to the afternoon, and I could never get it to turn the way I needed to here to run good. All of my teammates did a good job with it, but I just couldn’t run with those guys.” WERE THERE TWO GROOVES OFRACING TODAY? “There was tons of room out there. There was all kinds of room if you could get your car to work right. Carl made a lot of his passes on the top. There were a good two or three grooves out there.” DO YOU EXPECT THE SAME KIND OF TRACK CONDITIONS TOMORROW? “Yeah, I don’t think passing was a problem today at all. If you were faster than someone you could pass them. It just got kind of strung out, and when your tires got burned up a little bit, it was hard to get around them. There was easily two grooves out there.”

JON WOOD—47—Clorox/American Red Cross Ford Fusion (Finished 18th) – YOU HAD AN UPHILL BATTLE TODAY THAT STARTED WHEN YOU HAD TO FALL TO THE REAR OF THE FIELD AT THE START OF THE RACE. “Everything that could go wrong today did, and it was like that at Daytona in the truck race and it was like that in the Busch race today. Hopefully it will all work itself out. Where we started wasn’t the deciding factor in where we finished. We broke a motor with a couple to go. We were a little bit off on our pit sequence and that probably had something to do with it, but we had a really good car.”

TODD KLUEVER—06—3M Ford Fusion (Finished 12th) – RAYBESTOS ROOKIE PRESS CONFERENCE. “It was a pretty decent day for our 3M Ford Fusion. We needed to be a little bit better. Our driver needed to be a little bit smarter. This only my second Busch start, so not knowing how drastic the changes make the car under caution as far as what it’s going to do and where the car needed to be at the start of the race. I haven’t had those deals yet and neither has my crew chief Mike Kelley, so we’re all kind of learning together. We learned some of that at Daytona and ran 12th here, and it’s bad I guess for my first speedway start, but I sure would have like to have been in the top 10 for sure, but I think we had a little bit better car than that.” HOW WAS THE COMPETITION TODAY WITH ALL OF THE CUP DRIVERS COMPETING IN THE BUSCH RACE? “It’s tough. It’s a lot harder than the trucks are. But that’s ultimately my goal to be racing with those guys on Sunday, and that’s where I’m going to be next year when I take over the 6 car when Mark leaves. I love it when those guys come over here. It’s only going to improve me. Like I said, we have a lot to learn, but who better to learn from than those guys.”

CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE

“It was a blast. We were kind of in a tough position there at the end with the decision to pit, and we weren’t sure what to do, but I felt like we weren’t going to win if we stayed out. We just decided to pit. We didn’t have enough laps to get up there, but I still had a blast racing with Ryan and Jeff Burton, especially there in the middle of the race. And, I almost wrecked the first lap. We’re lucky we even got to finish the race.”

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE OPENING LAP? “We were just racing. I knew he (Newman) was on the outside of me and I knew I was going to get a little loose, but I didn’t think it just going to be that loose. It was just a mistake on my part. I should have pedaled a little bit and I got real fortunate not to wreck. That was real exciting. I know what they mean by catch your breath.”

WHAT DID YOUR CREW CHIEF SAY TO YOU AFTER THAT? “He didn’t say much. He didn’t say much, but try to forget about it.”

“Last week was about as miserable a week as I’ve had yet in Busch and Cup. To be on the pole and finish third – we didn’t win – but it’s still an awesome performance. It’s very important for my guys especially. If we would have wrecked on the first lap that would have been painful.”

GREG BIFFLE PRESS CONFERENCE

“The guys did a great job, Eddie Pardue and the whole team getting the car ready. We weren’t that great off the truck and we worked a lot on it. We got a lot better in qualifying. We did extremely well in qualifying and qualified third. In the beginning of the race I was a little bit loose and I should have known better that the track was going to tighten up. I made almost a fatal error there tightening the car up on the first stop and got extremely tight and lost some track position. Then we worked the rest of the day getting it back going, and we had a green-flag pit stop the next time so I couldn’t do a lot of adjustments. I didn’t want to lose any more track position so I kind of backed myself in a corner. There at the end, we were running down the 21 and the 60 – we were catching them about a tenth a lap – passed the 39 and we were closing in on them pretty good. I felt like I’d probably get to the 21 before the end of the race. I didn’t think I’d get to the 60, but then the caution came out, and it was all history. There was no doubt that we would stay out; we didn’t have any tires left. It wasn’t a decision for us, we had to stay out. We had used all of our sets of tires. I felt like track position was going to be important. I thought I was going to be a sitting duck because I thought that everybody was going to stop, at least two or four, and then I’d just end up 12th or something. A lot of guys ended up staying out probably because I stayed out and the 21 did.”

JACK ROUSH PRESS CONFERENCE

“It continues to be a pleasure to bring the guys out to California here. I enjoy the warm weather that we don’t have back east and up north now. Greg was awesome today, as he always is in California. Eddie Pardue and watching what he has done here, he is a product of our promote-within policy. Mechanics get to be chief mechanics and get to be car chiefs. Eddie Pardue was car chief for Mark Martin and now he’s crew chief for Greg. It’s just been wonderful to do that. Ameriquest, if anybody has been watching, Ameriquest is going to play a big part in this sport for many years to come. To be able to come here with them for the first time is great and to have the first Busch win for the new Fusion is also really good. The job of putting these teams together with people that are ambitious and don’t have the experience at their jobs is always a really tense thing in the first races, but Eddie got through it and the team got through it. It’s just great to come out here to California and to be able to have this kind of success early.”